Intellectuals put faith in Kostunica

By Julius Strauss

12:00AM BST 30 Sep 2000

VOJISLAV Kostunica has been propelled to the brink of power by a group of economists and university professors with almost no political experience.

Low-profile and scholarly, the group, which styles itself G17, shot to prominence this year after issuing a pamphlet called Project for Serbia. In it, they outlined a comprehensive plan for moving Serbia towards a market economy and repairing relations with the West.

Their sober plans are in stark contrast to the flowery and often vitriolic rhetoric of traditional opposition leaders such as Vuk Draskovic, an author and populist firebrand, who leads the Serbian Renewal Party.They believe that Serbia's immediate priorities are to shore up the ailing economy with loans from western lending institutions, scrap the discredited dinar and re-open talks on apportioning the debt of the old Yugoslavia.

Mladjan Dinkic, who leads the group, has said that membership of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will be immediate priorities. He says a new government team should be led by the former central bank governor, Dragoslav Avramovic, a veteran economist now in his eighties.

In a country used to empty promises and tough talk, the group's modest hopes have struck a chord, especially among the educated. It was the G17's decision to throw its weight behind Mr Kostunica's candidacy that underpinned his meteoric political rise. Unlike Mr Draskovic and rival opposition leader, Zoran Djindjic - a former mayor of Belgrade - he is not tainted by past associations with the Milosevic regime, a virtue that has scored highly with voters.